The focus of the study is to investigate the factors that impact on effective implementation of a performance management system at the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) in the Eastern Cape Region, Nelson Mandela Metro District. It is said that an organisational success in service delivery largely depends on the efficiency and effectiveness of its employees in undertaking their functions, duties and responsibilities (Ntombela, Mpehle and Penciliah, 2010: 63).

This thesis is focused mainly on performance measures of open-end mutual funds and analysis of selected funds with long track record (periods 1995-2013 or 2000-2013) available for individual investors in the Czech Republic. In the first part of the thesis, evolution of Czech collective investment business is described. Among traditional risk focused approaches, this thesis describes also less common approaches taking investors' psychology into account -- for example measurement of stress or net utility based on Loss Aversion theory. In the analytical part, the role of additional costs (e.g. entry fee or taxes) is emphasized as these additional costs are usually out of any consideration when measuring the performance. The results show that these additional costs may have significant impact on returns recorded by the investor. In the Czech asset management industry, we usually experience presentation of returns only -- without stress of risks or other factors, risk focused measurements are rarely displayed in funds' performance presentation.

Effective maintenance planning is essential and important in any organisation that is responsible for procuring and managing complex assets. In the marine shipping industry maintenance planning is very significant due to its complexity and the obligations on shipping organisations to comply with certain regulations and requirements. Moreover, improper planning can reduce the ship's availability, which may in turn, be reflected in the revenue of the company. Another issue that requires attention in this field is the cost of maintenance, since improper or inadequate planning could result in breakdowns that could increase the cost of maintenance.This research aims to identify the key factors that affect ship maintenance planning and to provide a framework that can help the decision maker to identify and choose optimum decisions regarding ship maintenance. The research is divided into four stages in order to achieve its objectives and to address the research problem.The first stage is the review of the literature to identify the need for maintenance and to select the key factors that affect maintenance planning. The findings indicate that: maintenance scheduling, selection of maintenance strategy, ship construction, crew compensation, and shipyard selection are the most important factors.The second stage is to evaluate maintenance performance measurements for the marine shipping industry by conducting case study and interviews with professionals involved in the mercantile industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six senior staff experts from three different organisations. The results show that: dry docking scheduling, maintenance costs and budgets, customer satisfaction, employees' satisfaction, classification requirements, and the ship's maintenance requirements are the main factors that have great influence on maintenance planning.The third stage is to develop new methodology to measure the maintenance performance in the marine shipping organisation which is the ship maintenance performance measurement (SMPM) framework. The developed method was validated to assist managers in making the right decisions in ship maintenance planning. The framework was developed based on ten thematic criteria that can be used as indicators for potential organisation growth, i.e., maintenance strategy; dry docking scheduling; budget and costs; the ship's equipment; customer satisfaction; employees; health, safety and environment; learning and growth; classification requirements; and the ship's operation and demands requirements. Interviews were conducted with key personnel from the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) to validate the framework.The fourth stage demonstrates that an optimised schedule for the dry docking of ships for routine maintenance has been constructed. This is accomplished on the basis of one measured criterion, dry docking scheduling, by using an integer programming model to maximise the ship's availability within the company fleet. The model is defined by three constraints: the maintenance window, maintenance completion, and the ship's limit. The model was validated using data from KOTC, and the results depict an optimum solution for maintenance scheduling, maximising the ship's availability to 100% and not less than 92%.

Dagens applikationer hanterar mer och mer data vilket resulterar i att de blir allt mer resurskrävande och kräver mer av hårdvaran. Vilket i förlängningen kan innebär att hårdvaran måste bytas ut med jämna mellanrum för att kunna köra mjukvaran på ett för användaren tillfredsställande sätt. Detta arbete undersöker om det genom att byta designteknik är möjligt att utveckla mindre resurskrävande applikationer. Arbetet presenterar en jämförelse mellan objektorienterad design (även kallad objektorienterad programmering, OOP) och data orienterad design (DOD). Detta genom att dels ta upp kända för- och nackdelar med respektive designteknik samt genom att utföra en mätning på respektive teknik. Det som anses vara de främsta fördelarna med OOP är återanvändning av kod, att koden är lätt att underhålla, säkerhet i form av inkapsling samt att objekten som används reflekterar den mänskliga verkligheten. Dessa fördelar är dock även något som bidrar till det som anses vara den främsta nackdelen med OOP, nämligen att den är prestandakrävande. När det gäller DOD så anses de främsta fördelarna vara att det medför en cachevänligare kod som leder till färre cachemissar. Det anses även vara lättare att parallellisera koden i jämförelse med OOP. Den nackdelen som tas upp med DOD är att de tar tid att lära sig och kräver en del övning. Dock är DOD väldigt okänt vilket resulterade i ett svagt underlag. Två simuleringar utvecklades i Unity varav den ena använder sig av den nya teknikstacken DOTS som är dataorienterad. Resultatet av mätningarna indikerar på att DOD använder mindre av hårdvaruresurserna vid prestandakrävande applikationer. Om applikationen ej är prestandakrävande märks dock ingen skillnad mellan de olika teknikerna vid fråga om processoranvändning. / Today, applications handle more and more data, which results in them becoming increasingly resource-intensive and requiring more of the hardware. Which in the long run may cause that the hardware must be replaced at regular intervals to be able to run the software in a way that is satisfactory for the user. This thesis investigates whether it is possible to get less resource-intensive applications by changing the design technology. The paper presents a comparison between object-oriented design (also known as object-oriented programming, OOP) and data-oriented design (DOD). This is performed by addressing the known advantages and disadvantages of each design technique and by measuring each technique in the matter of performance. What was considered to be the main advantages of OOP is the reuse of code, that the code is easy to maintain, security in the form of encapsulation and that the objects that are used reflect human reality. On the other hand, these advantages also contribute to what is considered to be the main disadvantage of OOP, namely that it is performance-intensive. When it comes to DOD, the main advantages are considered to be that it results in a more cache-friendly code that leads to fewer cache misses. DOD is also considered easier to parallelize the code compared to OOP. The disadvantage of DOD is that it is time consuming to learn and requires some practice. Though, DOD is very unknown which resulted in a narrow basis. Two simulations were developed in Unity, one of which uses the new technology stack DOTS, which is data-oriented. The results of the measurements indicate that DOD uses less of the hardware resources in performance-intensive applications. If the application is not performance-intensive, though, no difference is noticed between the different technologies when it comes to CPU-usage.

Cette thèse examine l’imagination des systèmes de mesure de la performance au sein de l’industrie pharmaceutique. Par une observation participante étendue dans une grande entreprise pharmaceutique et des entretiens dans cette industrie, les trois articles de cette thèse explorent les influences intra et extra-organisationnelles qui agissent sur la forme et les raisons des systèmes de rémunération que les sociétés pharmaceutiques utilisent pour leur force de vente. Le premier article considère que les systèmes comptables émergent d’un ensemble d’inscriptions dramatisées qui mettent en scène, encadrent et médiatisent l’interaction entre les différents acteurs, internes et externes à l’organisation, qui participent à la fabrication d’un algorithme de rémunération. Le deuxième article théorise de quelle manière moral imaginaries sont constitués en objets comptables et comment les instruments comptables agissent comme médiateur moral. Il présente les systèmes émergents de mesure de la performance en tant que dispositifs de calcul moral façonnés par les imaginaires moraux contrastés de concepteurs hétérogènes. Le troisième article se concentre sur la manière dont les systèmes de mesure de la performance émergent et se stabilisent dans le contexte des marchés, afin d'explorer les infrastructures comptables au niveau de l’industrie que permettent aux acteurs organisationnels de visualiser, rendre compte et agir sur le marché lorsque ce dernier est invisible à pour ses participants. Pour que les systèmes de mesure de la performance fonctionnent sur un marché, il est nécessaire d’avoir une collaboration au sein du secteur, des opacités construites et des processus de (de)commercialisation de l’identité des acteurs. / This thesis examines the field-level imagining of Performance Measurement Systems in the pharmaceutical sector. By means of an extended participant observation in a Big Pharma company and interviews in the pharmaceutical sector, the three articles of this thesis explore the intra- and extra-organizational influences that act upon the shape and rationales of the compensation systems pharmaceutical companies operate for their sales-force. The first article explores accounting systems as emerging from a set of dramatized inscriptions that stage, frame, and mediate interaction among the different actors, internal and external to the organization, that participate in the fabrication of a compensation algorithm. The second article theorizes in what way moral imaginaries are constituted into accounting objects, and how accounting acts as a moral mediator. It shows emergent performance measurement systems as moral calculating devices that are shaped by, and engage with, the contrasting moral imaginaries of heterogeneous designers. The third paper brings the concern with how performance measurement systems emerge and stabilize in the context of markets, to explore the field-level accounting infrastructures that enable organizational actors to visualize, account for, and act upon the market when the market is invisible to its participants. For performance measurement systems to work in a market, it is suggested, they require field-level collaboration, constructed opacities, and processes of marketization and de-marketization of actors’ identities.

[pt] Os sistemas de mensuração de desempenho buscam acompanhar o alcance dos objetivos estratégicos a partir de um conjunto de indicadores que suportem os processos de tomada de decisão. Várias iniciativas, entretanto, têm se mostrado ineficazes devido à subjetividade no desdobramento desses objetivos em indicadores. Métodos de business analytics vêm sendo utilizados para auxiliar esse desdobramento via análise de dados, com maior geração de valor para as organizações. O presente trabalho apresenta a aplicação das técnicas de Random Forest e Bayesian Belief Network para, respectivamente, selecionar indicadores e mapear suas relações em um estudo prático numa empresa do setor de transporte ferroviário de cargas, com foco no suporte ao indicador de disponibilidade de locomotivas. Para o processo de seleção de variáveis, observou-se que o algoritmo Variable Selection Using Random Forest obteve o melhor desempenho em acurácia e tempo de processamento. Na elaboração do mapa estratégico, a combinação do algoritmo Tabu Search com o critério estatístico Bayesian Information Criteria levou à escolha de um arranjo parcimonioso em suas relações, aderente à expectativa inicial associada ao critério estatístico utilizado. Foi observado um significativo vínculo entre a disponibilidade de locomotivas e indicadores operacionais da empresa em estudo, revelando o potencial de influência do modelo operacional nos resultados da disponibilidade. Verifica-se a oportunidade de emprego de técnicas de séries temporais para a previsão de desempenho a partir dos relacionamentos entre indicadores, bem como para aperfeiçoar a fase de seleção de variáveis, com a identificação de possíveis defasagens existentes nesses relacionamentos. / [en] Performance measurement systems seek to monitor the achievement of strategic objectives through a set of indicators that support decision-making processes. Several initiatives, however, have been shown to be ineffective due to the subjectivity in the unfolding of these objectives into indicators. Business analytics methods have been used to assist this deployment via data analysis, with greater value generation for organizations. The present work presents the application of Random Forest and Bayesian Belief Network techniques to, respectively, select indicators and map their relationships in a practical study in a company in the rail freight sector, with a focus on supporting the locomotive availability indicator. For the variable selection process, it was observed that the Variable Selection Using Random Forest algorithm obtained the best performance in accuracy and computation time. In the preparation of the strategic map, the combination of the Tabu Search algorithm with the Bayesian Information Criteria statistical criterion led to the choice of a parsimonious arrangement in its relations, adhering to the initial expectation associated with the statistical criterion used. A significant link was observed between the locomotive availability and operational indicators of the company under study, revealing the potential influence of the operational model on the availability results. There is an opportunity to use time series techniques to predict performance based on the relationships between indicators, as well as to improve the variable selection phase, with the identification of possible lags in these relationships

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The subject of this thesis is evaluation of company performance and based on acquired information formulation of suggestions for improvement. The theoretical part describes classic and modern indicators for measurment of company performance. In the practical parts there are an analysis of company performance and the results are compare with competitive and average in industry. Last part of this thesis is dedicated to suggestions for an improvment.

The diploma thesis is by its nature focused on evaluation of company performance. Analysed company Navláčil stavební firma, s.r.o. is regional provider of construction services. This company is analysed in two different aspects in the diploma thesis. Analysis is focused on market position and performance within specific economic activities per CZ-NACE - F-4120 at first. Second analysis focuses on evaluation and competitive benchmarking. Its target is to determine week spots and propose solutions that should improve these weak spots and the whole company performance.